Made Your Dry Lips Sing
by P. Honoria
Summary: A new man enters the Emcee's life. Previously published, now separate from my other Cabaret story. Once again based on the 2014 revival with Sienna Miller. Title: The Cure.
1. The Moon Makes Paler

~oOo~

He was in frame, only not on the same stage.

His were the moves of a ghost, one trapped above the living. Seen only as white, an apparition of the upper body. Bare flesh made iridescent in the faint blue light; coloring him as Morphinae.

The air was filled with the rhythm of stomping feet. Worn heels digging into the fibers of the floorboards beneath them, leaving behind black marks, cuts to the already marred wood. He marched as well, raising his leg and throwing his foot with force to the metal of the balcony, perhaps a little too hard. He couldn't tell, the stage echoed with the corruption of all their steps. The hits, like biting teeth.

He breathed in, crossing his arms behind his head, and felt the world fade away. The faces in the audience were gone. He was in his bedroom, alone. The music, though, remained and it filled him, linked itself to the drugs in his veins and threatened to exit in the same way; as the blood spilling from his open wounds.

Behind his eyes, shooting to the edges of skull along his temple, all was abuzz with the warmth of an outer existence. Another plane.

He moved his hips the way girls do. They way they move in pictures for men, that was the way he moved; with hopes to lure. He rocked himself back and forth until the song was all but over, then ran to the balcony where he placed his foot on a section of lower railing, lunging his weight as though pushing deeper a shovel, trying to work away the tension. Mimicking the way the girls were moving below.

 _Wohl...Ach, lebe wohl!_

 _Auf wiedersehen,..._

 _Bye bye mein Herr!_

And the spotlight was on him again, the circle created to burn. _"The final performance of Sally Bowles. Thank you, Sally. Bye-Bye. Thanks, Rosie, Lulu, Fritzie, Texas and Helga. Beautiful dancing."_ The bulbs in the frame flickered, yellow, white and red. In a frenzy he couldn't tell the difference between music and applause.

He'd glided down the stairs and brushed his hands over Frenchie's satin, over a wooden chest, before losing himself in the shadows again. Once lost he found Sally snaking through the coals. Seeing him she flipped her shawl over her shoulder, covering the skin, the bruises he'd already glimpsed, even in the dark.

He walked to her, stopping to observe the act continuing without them. Sally leaned over, one foot suspended; her lips and nose, her blonde hair, pink in the light as she whispered, "How was your date last night?"

"He never showed up. Shame we can't trade places and make it so last night never happened to you instead... I saw the marks. What all did he do?"

"Oh, it's nothing. Really." She turned her face from his, crossed her hands over her chest, holding tighter the fabric. She sighed, her mind, showing through her eyes, was on the night.

Emcee removed a package of cigarettes from his pocket, tapping one in his palm before lighting. "Yes, I can see that. Nothing..."

He patted her shoulder, as his life was the same. He had no words of encouragement to give her. No false hopes or lies. His words to her moments ago had been laced with anger, but only for the cards fate had decided to deal them.

Emcee turned to Sally, the cigarette dangling from his lips, a rouged line around its middle as he beamed; the tight fitted smirk that seemed to rest directly under the end of his nose.

Two fingers, one from each hand, set about spreading the ends of her mouth into a grin. Sally, annoyed and charmed at the same time, found herself willfully smiling as she batted away his hands, cursing him softly.

Catching one of her fingers he kissed it, bowing as he departed stillness for the fear of the audience, to the two clear lines between those seated in countless rows before the bar.

Walking, the faces and bodies merged with the colors falling to them from above, making them featureless. Blurs of pinks edged with blue; hued noses, hollowed eyes. He passed under the lowered roof of the mezzanine, and to the bar.

As the glass of gin met his lips a hand met his shoulder. With the alcohol still between his teeth, under his tongue, he turned, finding that the touching pulse belonged to a man. His soft face was young, with hardened dark eyes, two shades darker than his wavy brunette hair. About him was the air of man removed from the country and the trees he was used to: one who was lost, though he was loath to admit it.

When Emcee saw him he was instantly given a vision of the man alone amid a field of green, his dark suit standing out against vibrancy. He next saw himself atop an unmade bed in a corner near a white curtained window, the sun shining in on both as he and the man kissed, ready to fall from the mattress edge.

The Emcee's red lips, lined in black, curled into a grin exposing his long teeth. "Hello, Handsome."

~oOo~


	2. Vestra

_A/N: Morris, Emcee's lover, should be imagined as looking like Colin Firth's character from A Month in the Country._

~oOo~

In the black surface above stairs he could as a shadow see himself.

The leopard print carpet beneath his feet was not visible in the reflection beyond, nor was the chase lounge behind; the mossy alcove housed only he, and as a spirit in lean white he witnessed himself move as if viewing another.

The mirror held him.

Long ago, when first he'd entered the Kit Kat Klub, much of his being had been forced to leave the prison of his body. His light, his true essence, and those of the Klub's other performers, had been laid to rest behind coal glass, so never would they again know as fully the pull of their wills. Strings of faint incandescent bulbs, their quintessences, acted as a backing for a mirror opening to an underworld.

From the Klub there was to be next to no escape, save death.

The Emcee raised his arms, watching with detached, somnolent perusal of that which flexed beneath his flesh... the bones, how they emerged and withdrew when he moved this way or that.

There was behind him a flicker of motion as Fritzie's colors blurred with his own against black, as if beads of paint creating a ripple effect in pools of water, diluting to a filmy cloud.

As the images remained blurred he looked to the chandelier above, to its many faceted stones. The yellows, blues, greens, all colors contained within a spark. A five and dime.

Thinking of days before, when there had been such a light under his ribs, he saw in a vision the movement of his evenings. The endless performances on and off stage. All the girls, all the boys. The boys, boys, boys.

His coat, ragged, the snow entering his shoes.

W _hy does he want me?_

 _Why does he come to my weak wire bed at night, rock with me in it? Clamber over bones, hurting himself against the posts._

 _Pressing himself into me._

 _His breath hard in my ear, on my neck._

 _I am nothing._

 _A whore in the eyes of all at night, of the stage. At heart._

 _What is he to be afraid of? A man who can at times not speak for the lack of words in his head._ _One who made a call to a table telephone only to let fear win him over instead of me. Working man, known only by first name, Morris._

 _And what am I to do about this Morris?_

He'd been in his life for a little over a month, seeing him on and off as work would allow. Never anywhere but his room. Always at night. The Emcee had at first been loath to admit him to his quarters, his almost child-sized bed, as his room betrayed not only his state of poverty, but also his mind.

On the wall were tacked cuttings, different blurred visions of stars collected in a collage covering half a wall, tented yellow in corners with dried paste. Dotted with strokes of paint, in a spot blood. Marlene Dietrich was made their throbbing heart, the queen spider of a web made of arteries, veins. Beside the mass were political articles from newspapers, filers handed out in the streets - warnings of what was to come, grocery bills, notes from the Klub, his own writings and sketches posted in loneliness. Backed by stains, holes made to the plaster.

The floors were only a slight improvement. There was next to no furniture except for a small table, a vanity, and two chairs. The clothes his closet would not allow were hung from corner rafters, the backs of chairs. Thrown to the floor.

Morris, however, showed no sign of discomfort, or surprise even, with his first visit. Emcee assumed his reaction, or lack thereof, was from his own habitation of similar lodgings. There was no registered concern when made aware of the presence of rodents, of other pests. Unwashed glasses.

Normally he would never bring a client to his room, not only out of shame, but fear. However, this man was no client. He was his beau. A lover he could not let the world know was his, but who was his nonetheless. The walls, their walls knew. Sally knew, _they knew_ , and that was all that mattered.

~oOo~


End file.
